


Across the Sea

by autumndynasty



Category: Looper (2012)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Family, Future Fic, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:57:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autumndynasty/pseuds/autumndynasty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Between full realisation and pulling the trigger, Joe dreams of France. After the end, Sara dreams of home and beyond that, Cid makes his dreams come true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Across the Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littlerhymes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlerhymes/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, littlerhymes! I loved your ideas and went with them a little though I must admit my brain went off in a bit of a different direction. Still, I hope you enjoy it at least as much as I enjoyed writing it!

He really should have seen this coming.

If there was one thing Joe had heard enough times, it was this: the definition of insanity. It was doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result, apparently.

_À tort se lamente de la mer qui ne s'ennuie d'y retourner._

So what, that was his life now? Doing the same thing over and over, giving and receiving violence, losing the chance for a child and killing one too? Giving another the same start in life that he had?

And it wasn’t what Joe wanted, honestly. It just wasn’t. And in those seconds, those scant moments between full realisation and pulling the trigger on that damned blunderbuss, well. He wondered what he had wanted.

Joe had wanted France, that’s what.

_A woman – his mom, vaguely featured with muddy dark hair and high heels – mumbles in a rare lucid moment ‘I’m gonna go to France.’ He asks her why (at least he guesses he does) and she never says anything else._

Joe knew why now (he guessed). People had this fixation on France, especially Paris. It was the land of nostalgia and romance. Things were good before, so nostalgia...well, it was a strong thing.

It wasn’t that he wanted some connection to the mother that had to give him up. It wasn’t like he was planning to go to France and reunite with her or anything (hell, she wouldn’t have ever got there).

It was that Joe sees those pictures of France on the internet, in the news, in the movies. It was that he ate fancy French food sometimes just because he could and it was because he could talk to Beatrix at the diner (that he actually preferred to the fancy stuff) in what was becoming a passable French accent. France was nostalgia and sophistication and everything America wasn’t anymore.

A _good_ place.

He just never got rid of the goal, he guessed. Joe wanted to go to France. It was as simple as that.

He should have seen it coming. Instead of his loop closing (it had to one day), Seth had kicked him from the path he was on, sending him spiralling in a way that even repeating over and over ‘I’m going to France’ could fix. Not now he knew what he had done _(was going to do, would now never do, before everything got shot to hell)_. He’d gone to fucking China. Even though he’d shot down Abe, over and over. It hadn’t made France real.

Joe guessed he was glad. He got what he wanted all along and he’d done it right there in Kansas. He’d _do_ it.

A loop has no end. It has a beginning and by the time you finish, you aren’t sure where that was exactly, but that doesn’t change the fact it has one. It’s the same place the loop closes. And it doesn’t change the fact that there was a beginning and there is an end to everyone. You’re born in company and you die alone. That’s how it goes. Even loopers die someplace different, some situation different, to where they started.

The situation they were all in now, the cane-field in Kansas, it had to have happened before and it’d happen again. Spiralling, over and over with loss.

_Ce que chante la corneille, chante le corneillon._

Who didn’t want unconditional love?

So it was all a mess. Joe wasn’t back with his mother, he wasn’t innocent and nothing about the ending would be neat. It needed one more loss.

But between full realisation and pulling the trigger, Joe thought of France.

* * *

The first thing Sara does when she gets home is to sit Cid down at the kitchen table with a sandwich while she gathers bandages from the bathroom cabinet. When she comes back downstairs, the sandwich is unsurprisingly untouched, Cid just staring out the window with a thousand-yard stare too old for his age.

“Cid, baby, let’s patch you up,” she says, bringing him back. There’s blood on Cid’s cheek and neck, and caked on her shirt from where she carried him home. Gone are the days when that makes her scream or even fuss about ruined clothes. She’s just glad they got out of it with horrible memories and a badly scratched jaw.

Except for... Except that they didn’t completely.

When Cid has a couple of bandaids on his cut ( _‘Yeah, it’ll probably scar, baby. You’ll look rugged, my little man,’_ ) and a full tummy, Sara tucks her son into bed and heads back out into the dying light.

Even with the kind of day Sara’s had, it’s not hard to find the right field again. It’s her farm, even if she hasn’t had it all that long, really. And the crashed cars stick out a mile.

Bypassing her own wreck, Sara approaches Joe’s toppled vehicle. It’s a bit blood-stained but probably serviceable, she thinks. She glances down at the silver bars, scattered on the ground. Looper pay, she knows. Damn loopers.

But it’s his... (his last gift).

She follows the trampled path through the field.

(And, for good or bad, the only thing he gave that he had no choice in giving).

As long as she ignores the spatter and unnatural stillness, Joe almost looks asleep. It’s a cliché but faced with another dead body, it reminds her why she’s always agreed with the sentiment.

 _(It’s a sentiment so common these days, especially in the city. Mom tried to shield her girls, before she married and they moved to the country, but she couldn’t stop both of them going back. She was just grateful Sara never followed her career choice. Too bad it followed her home_ ).

Sara brushes Joe’s hair. It’s soft, dark like Cid’s. She’ll never really understand how it all happened. She’ll miss Joe, the man who wormed his way into their lives so quickly. She’ll never let Cid become like him, if she has any choice.

She thinks of her own mother and knows it’s not a matter of choice at all.

But that’s okay. They’ll be okay.

* * *

Cid has vivid memories. It’s a blessing as much as it’s a curse. Depends on the memory.

Cid remembers his mom’s fingers in his hair. He knows objectively they were rough with farmwork yet never dirty, but he doesn’t remember feeling that. He just remembers the pressure of them, brushing away worries (and sometimes his patience).

Cid remembers the sound of the wind through the sugarcane, almost like rain. He likes the sound of rain most days. Depends on whether he’s feeling nostalgic.

Cid remembers Joe. Not what he looks like and definitely not his voice; Cid remembers a man who appeared as suddenly as he disappeared. At 5 years old, Joe was a hero. A man with a gun to protect people with, an adult who understood. A mysterious lone-ranger, like a character in a book.

Cid knows that, objectively, Joe wasn’t a good man. He definitely wasn’t a role model. But Joe had given voice to Cid’s childhood worries, not justifying them exactly but defining them. Legitmating them.

Cid knows of the Rainmaker (that never will be); he knows Mom told him so he wouldn’t go to the city. Wouldn’t become a killer. He doesn’t.

He goes to France instead.

It’s complicated. It’s not because his mom begged him not to go, all through his rebellious teenage years. It’s not that he doesn’t think loopers _(like Grandma, like Joe)_ and other city dirt aren’t horrible people. It’s just that... growing up on a farm changes you, Cid guesses. It makes you think city dirt isn’t your business, especially if all you see of it is the odd vagrant.

TK is useful, no doubt. And Cid helps those he sees, but he’s more like Joe than he (or Mom) ever intended: he’s no hero, really. He just tries where he can and that’s enough most days.

France is no Land of Opportunity but it’s now home. It’s different but warm. It’s hopeful. Perhaps it’s a bit about finding a connection to the man who became such a short-lived second father figure. He knows where Joe went and, despite what Sara always said, Joe hadn’t gone to France. Cid always knew that, really.

All he ever wanted was to feel safe. Even then.

Despite everything, he has that.

**Author's Note:**

> \- À tort se lamente de la mer qui ne s'ennuie d'y retourner (Proverb: He complains wrongfully at the sea that suffer shipwreck twice//Don't do the same thing again and expect different results)  
> \- Ce que chante la corneille, chante le corneillon (Proverb: As the old crow sing, so sings its fledglings//Children will become like older generations)
> 
> To me, Looper was equal parts melancholy and hopeful, so despite the lack of true Yuletide cheer, that was what I aimed for. Too cheerful would, to me, destroy the fantastic quiet atmosphere of the film's ending.
> 
> While I was deciding what to write, I thought a lot about and tried to pick apart the time travel mechanics of Looper. It was then that I realised that really wasn't the point of the film. It's about the characters, their relationsips and their minds. And then I realised trying to write time travel for Looper would hurt my head way too much!
> 
> Something that surprised me while I was writing was making Sara's mother a looper. One that married and moved to the country where she had Sara and Cid's aunt. Sara wanted to go back to the city, not suited to rural life when she was young. But with the loops closing, like Old Joe's wife, Cid's parents were caught in the crossfire. But yeah, that just kinda slipped it's way in there! As far as Cid goes, it seems to me he has a good heart but isn't extraordinarily outgoing. He's more selective who he likes. So his section is just one of the ways I thought his life might go. :) Part of me thinks it's likely he would still become the Rainmaker - we see him as a villain because he's killing loopers like Seth and Joe, but when you step back and look at it objectively, he's clearing out the horrible practice of untraced murder committed by criminal gangs and killing off assassins who bring misery and kill mothers. Why wouldn't Cid want that, who loves his own family so much and seems inherently good, if going about it in a brutal way?
> 
> But that's not very hopeful. I don't like thinking Cid will be a mass-murderer at Yuletide!


End file.
